WILLIAM PHILLIPS, for many years Lieut. Governor of this Commonwealth, holds a central and prominent place in a family group of world-wide celebrity; he is also deservedly not less conspicuous in the larger brotherhood of eminent Christian civilians in our country, who have lived and labored in the closest sympathy with the clergy of their times.

This family group is so remarkable that one can never look at it without an impulse to portray the virtues of the many and various characters, all of which are eminent, lest to give one any special prominence should seem a kind of injustice to the others. We have often asked ourselves, how it is possible that such a subject as the History of the Phillips Family, should have failed to interest some historic mind long ago? Such a succession of models in character-such varied eminence in church and state-the farseeing use of wealth in so many beneficent and affluent gifts to subserve the cause of patriotism, education, or religion, might well enlist a writer worthy of so good a theme. Attractive as one separate portrait might be, the true character of each would be best seen when fitly

surrounded by its peers in the long and favored line. It may now be too late for such a work to be properly done; yet, if it is so, we cannot cease to ask, why was it not sooner done?-and, if it cannot now be so well done as it might have been a quarter of a century since, could it not even now be so far done worthily by some congenial author, in command of sufficient time and means for the needed research, as to enrich our religious literature with a most invaluable volume ? Our Congregational Quarterly has a special mission, we cannot doubt, for the present and future, in just this province,

the past neglect of which excites in us now such profound regrets. But we should regret to see such wide and rich fields of history as these, left to this form of culture only.

Let us, however, notwithstanding our embarrassments and regrets, briefly commemorate the subject of this sketch, in a few passing pages here.

For a period of one hundred and thirty years before his birth the family name had been specially honored in New England; its distinction thus far arising not from wealth, or the munificent charitable